DIRT

At the risk of sounding philosophical:
Browsing through Facebook, I came across a lot of status updates about how deceiving, dishonest, untrustworthy, etc, people are these days. All of them were coherent in their thoughts of wanting to live only for themselves from 'now on' and that they don't need anybody 'now'. They have been cheated on and their trust has been broken in some way and thus they have, most probably, jumped to conclusions about what they need to do from 'now on' or 'now'.

But what if even they have done similar stuff to someone else? What if they, you and me are all guilty of such deeds? Thinking on these lines a thought (in the form of a poem) came to my mind, which is there at the end of this post. Is there anybody who's not dirty? If yes, you can stop right here, if no, then what happens next?

dhaaga chahe jo ho
maila to har kapda hai
par dekh kripa us nadiya ki
kaise har mail ko vo pive hai

maila kahan hai ye kapda
maila to wo daag hai
jo badh jave roop iska
to wo kapda jag ko tyag hai


According to me:
No matter who the person is, everybody has been on the wrong side of the things sometime in his/her life.
But there is some universal power that cleans us of all that dirt and makes us anew.

It's not the individual that is dirty,
it's his/her deeds that are (this thought first came to Gandhiji but really, I haven't taken it from him)
but if such deeds increase beyond a limit,
it's not the deeds that are abandoned by the world, it's the person that is.

So if I feel I should live and think only for myself, then I am abandoning this world, or am I really?

OUR MOST DANGEROUS ENEMY

After 9/11 US declared Osama Bin Laden our most dangerous enemy, the enemy of man kind. And along with him were many other terrorists. Now, to some it may not bother, they might just not care about it because, 'they are not so unfortunate to get attacked by terrorists'. To some, their neighbours, relatives, landlords and others may be the most dangerous enemy of man kind and they do have their respectable reasons for thinking so.

But what really made US list Laden as the enemy of man kind? What makes us think that a particular person is evil? Sure their deeds do but wouldn't it be more helpful if we just forget what wrongs somebody does to us? We can't. It has almost become a law of nature to have a feeling of killing someone once an emotion called ANGER takes over us. It is an emotion which has ruined uncountable lives. Actually, it is the reason behind every life that has been ruined. So, it is anger that is our most dangerous enemy. 

There is something known as 'The Cycle of Anger' (yes, I just made it up). According to TCA if person A is angry with person B then there exists some person C who is angry with person A such that person B is angry with person C. There can be 'n' number of persons in the cycle and like it or not, this cycle has been existing since a long time and as long as we exist, it will too. But sure it's up to us whether or not to be a part of it. But that requires a lot of power of will because the cycle is so lucrative that even the Gods have not been able to resist it and believe me, even they have repented. On the religious side, TCA is the very creation of Satan/Kali/whoever the demon is according to your religion. We need to stay away from it for as long as possible and fortunately that is not impossible. Some great men and women deserve to get their names registered in guinness for having resisted TCA throughout their lives.

I'm not saying we should never get angry or we should try to suck out the emotion out of us, because it's not possible. Anger is an emotion just like any other. Haven't you hidden your tears in front of your friends after watching a really emotional movie? Haven't you hidden your sadness from your children? Haven't you hidden your laughter in the middle of dead silence class in college and school? Some have also hidden their love. So c'mon, hide your anger too. I have always believed that love and anger are two sides of the same coin. If you show one of them, the other gets hidden. Also, to most of us love is the strongest emotion so if we can hide love we CAN hide anger too. I can't remember a single instance when I have acted in anger and not regretted later, can you?

So, how do we go about it? How do we hide anger and prevent major damages? It's simple. SHUT UP! Yes, do not speak when you're angry unless you really have to and you're sure that what you say is completely unrelated to what made you angry. Because when you're angry the devil inside you comes out and just spoils the party (yes even if most of the parties today are more devilish). You will go on to say things you never wanted to and later, when your calm, you'll realise how hurtful words can be sometimes. Blabbering when you're angry not only boils your blood but it starts to heat others' blood too. And when that happens, Mr. Bush declares war and hangs Saddam Hussein. 

For some keeping their mouths shut may not help, in such cases just walk off making an excuse. Leaving the ambience filled with anger and hate really helps. Look for a cool and quiet place and just relax there. Punch a wall, a rock or anything that cannot feel it but never even think of doing it to ones who can. I've punched living beings a couple of times and trust me it didn't end well. Also, punching hard objects when you're angry tones up your knuckles (not that you should use them now). The laughter therapy from 'Munna Bhai MBBS' also helps.

There are a million other ways like yoga and pranayam or the easy ones like recalling a joke or a funny incidents but I understand nobody would think of yoga and pranayam in the middle of a developing plot of a murder or would like to share a joke.

Come to think of it, who are we to decide what punishment a person deserves for an offence because according to TCA, when we get angry, we become one of the three persons. I do not mean to say we should let all the criminals free but if it is us who decides what is a crime and what is not, then somewhere down the track it is us who has made criminals out of people and we all know they become criminals due to a reason. If we attempt to track that reason we WILL find anger as one of them.

So, to conclude I would say, just try being away from anger......at least till 14 of this month. 

You're In Charge

Do you ever have mood swings? Does it ever feel that everything and everyone around you has turned against you all of a sudden? Blame your brain for such feelings.

You may think that you are in charge of your life completely (with the exception of 'nagging' elders pretending to understand your life better than you) but this is so hypothetical. It's your brain controlling your every action, not only from the scientific point of view, but in all view points. Sometimes you find a task boring and you can do anything to get away from it and some other time you love the same task so much that you go on doing it for hours. A glance of a dark and gloomy object can fill you with negative feelings and the one which is bright and colorful can do the opposite, and we all know the aftermaths of either events.

The point here is that if we humans boast of universal supremacy over all living and non-living things, what about the supremacy over ourselves and by that I mean our actions, emotions, expressions and feelings which are controlled by the brain. I've read and heard that the most powerful person in the world is the US president, which is true to a great extent, but there is something more powerful than him (other than the first lady of course!), his mind. Instead of blaming Mr.Bush Jr. for the Gulf crisis I would blame his greedy mind. Had he had his mind under his control he wouldn't have declared war over Iraq and executed the dictator Hussein. My scarce knowledge on this issue doesn't permit me to discuss this topic in detail and it isn't the point I'm trying to bring into focus either. What I'm saying is that if we really want to conquer the Earth we have to conquer ourselves first. We need to conquer our mind as that is what defines us, right?

I would like to place an example here of myself. I'm trapped here in Mumbai doing internship in a pharmaceutical company. I'm assigned work which can be completed in at the most two hours but I'm expected to work on it for about four to five days. I don't know what I can do after I've completed my work in just 2 hours. I still have a couple of days ahead of me to work on it but my work doesn't need any optimisation and even if it does I'm incapable of thinking of any. To add to the problem, I can't take leaves for unmentionable reasons, I can't cut down my working hours, so what do I do? My office has become the most boring places I've ever been and I feel I'm trapped like a bird yelling for freedom but no one wants to listen. This is what I used to think when my mind was let free by me. But now I love going to the office and I can sit there for eight hours with very little, rather than no, boredom in company. Earlier I wanted to terminate my training before the official date and that would have also made me lose the valuable certificate I will receive at the end of it. But now it's just the opposite (not that I want to extend the official date but I'm comfortable with what it is right now).

So, how did this transformation happen? I just associated my mind with the positives of my internship.

When I was made to sit idle I used to surf the net for personal reasons, browsing through many sites looking for information on various topics, checking mails and working on my blog. Even this article is written sitting in my office. Because my time was spent on constructive tasks only (it's a different story why I started using the net for constructive purposes explored in my article My Four Pillars for Success)  and I had the liberty to say, if questioned on why I'm doing my personal work in the office, "I have not been assigned any work" I had no fear of higher authorities. I started associating my training with the time spent on the net which was so fruitful and entertaining at the same time. Thus, my perception of the boring and gloomy office changed to a 'happy-happy' place for fun and it was some days later that I realised that it was all in my mind. Even today if I think of work before leaving for office my legs start to hurt but if i think of everything other than that I want to rush to the office. No matter what my mind tells me, I keep enforcing the idea that office is fun and that has made life a lot easier and happy.

If you follow this approach of associating everything with the positives every task would become easier and eventually your mind would be in your control. It tells you something negative and you empower yourself over it by thinking about the positive.

Had Mr.Bush Jr. thought about the positives about his nation by thinking about the high standards of living of his citizens and his nation's rich economy, his mind would never have won over him by making him greedy for more treasure from oil.